Title Author Date

Your website -- Part 1 [email protected] Nov 16, 2003

Dear Sir:

I read your site and you are now on my friends list so I can receive you emails. I updated some personal information I compiled and I think it gives a very thorough answer to something that you posted on your site which many people alledge is a contradiction in the Bible. If you could post some of this information on your site I would be indebted to you. Here is a partial copy of a letter I sent someone regarding the issue that was posted on your site:

Thank you for being so prompt regarding getting back to me regarding the 3 inadvertant errors I found on your website.....

The second inadvertant mistake you made was saying that the rock badger does not regurgitate and rechew its food (The New American Standard Bible translates the hebrew word shaphan into rock badger. The King James Bible uses the word coney). A more precise term for rock badger from a scientific point of view is the word hyrax. And according to the Biological Abstracts and a German biology journal the hyrax definitely regurgitates and rechews its food:

http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/BHyrax18May1991.htm

Also, the hyrax apparently spends about an hour regurgitating and rechewing its food:

http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/BWilliamsvsAnon71to73.htm

So Moses actually was ahead of the Biological Abstacts by about 3,000 years!!!!

The third mistake you made was in saying that rabbits (actually hares) do not regurgitate and rechew their food.

This is what Wycliffe Bible Encylopedia says about the hare:

" While not a true ruminant according to modern classification in that it does not have a four chambered stomach, the hare does rechew its food. There is a process of partial regurgitation of material that it is too hard for little cells in the stomach to absorb initially; thus there hare actually chews food previously swallowed (E.P. Schulze, "The Ruminating Hare,"Bible-Science Newsletter, VIII [Jan. 15, 1970], 6).

You can look up the Bible-Science Newsletter via your librarian in a catalogue that librarians refer to as worldcat. According to worldcat the Minnesota Historical Society keeps copies of the Bible-Science Newsletter. You should be able to obtain a copy through your library through interlibrary loan. The Bible-Science Newletter is now published by Creation Moments, P.O. Box 260, Zimmerman, MN 55398. The phone number for Creation Moments is 763-856-2552. By the way, Creation Moments used to be known as Bible Science Association.

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Your website -- Part 2 [email protected] Nov 16, 2003

Here is some additional physiology information from the scienfific literature that says that hares (and hyraxes) are ruminants:

http://www.apologeticspress.org/faq/r&r8912a.htm

I read a weblog from a person who by all appearances seems to be very knowledgeable of rabbit behavior (I am guessing that hares and rabbits are somewhat similar):

"Rabbits will re-eat the regurgitated material after a process of fermentation, to be further digested and absorbed. To a degree it also supplies the bacterial colonies in the cecum and appendix that incite fermentation."

Here is that weblog link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DebunkCreation/message/19508?source=1

I think the evidence for hyrax cud chewing is essentially a done deal. Here is what I think regarding the hare:

I believe there are 4 reasons for believing the hare regurgitates and rechews its food:

1. The English authoritative literature (Biological Abstracts) did not state that Hyraxes regurgitated and rechewed their food until 1967. If the shaphan is the hyrax and it appears to be then Moses was 3,000 years plus ahead of the world's scientific literature. Is it a stretch to believe that the same could happen with hares?

2. The Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia says that hares regurgitate and rechew their food and Wycliffe cites a science pulbication to substantiate this. I have found that the Wycliffe organization does excellent research and scholarship. It is true that they could have blown this one but anyone familar with Wycliffe would agree they are judicious as far as what they will publish.

3. A weblog of a person who seems well read on rabbit behavior says in a weblog that rabbits regurgitate and rechew their food as a matter of normal behavior in the context I am reading the weblog.

4. Hyraxes and hares do not have 4 chamber ruminant stomachs and scientists wrongly assumed that therefore hyraxes did not regurgitate and rechew their food. I do not have to stretch my imagination to guess that the scientific community could do the same exact mistake more than once. History does repeat itself and science is a social enterprise that is not immune from this type of behavior.

5. The Bible has overturned it critics hundreds of times evidentially through fields like archaeology, the physical sciences, and the social sciences. I also know that the Bible has fullfilled prophecy: http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.org Is it hard to believe that God's word overturned it critics one more time?

Considering the 5 points cited above is it too much of a stretch to imagine that hares chew their cud? At the very least a reasonable person who is not even a Bible believer could reasonably say that it is open to debate on whether rabbits do or do not chew the cud. Based on my research of the Biblical and non-Biblical material, I believe that hares do chew the cud.

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Your website -- Part 3 [email protected] Nov 16, 2003

Next, an important point I want to make is that the hebrew word gerah (Strong's concordance states regarding gerah: " from 'gerar' [1641] the cud (as scraping the throat) -cud) is linguistically associated with the word garon which can be (though not always) translated neck or throat according to Hebrew scholars. A prominent Hebrew Scholar that pointed this out is Ibn Ezra. This is why so many scholars have never accepted the information that was on your site. Also, most Bible translators simply translate the hebrew words mentioned on your site to the following words: "chew the cud".

I will briefly mention that some scholars say the animal shaphan is uncertain as far as what animal it actually is but if you do an investigation of the matter I think you will find the uncertainty was partly or largely caused by some scholars not wanting to associate the shaphan with the hyrax because they mistakenly thought the hyrax does not chew its cud when actually we both know the hyrax does in fact chew its cud.

As you can tell I spent quite a bit of time regarding this issue. Please send me some feedback using the email address that I sent this email to as you are now on my email friends list and will not be screened out via my email filter. I am interested in whether or not you are going to incorporate this information into your website and make the suggested corrections.

Lastly, I wanted to mention to you that I do not know what edition of the Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia contains the hare information as it was a paperback version and the front pages have been torn off. I know for sure that it was a Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia that was purchased some time between the years of 1981 and 1995.

Sincerely,

Ken DeMyer

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Your website Naftali Zeligman Nov 17, 2003

The suggestion that the hyrax (Heb. shafan, “rock badger” if you wish) chews the cud was raised in the 1960s by Dr. Hubert Hendrichs and made some headlines. Yet, most zoologists today doubt the accuracy of Hendrichs’ observations. Hyraxes do sometimes make chewing-like movements with their jaws without having eaten anything immediately prior to that moment; this was interpreted by Hendrichs as a sign of rumination, but on closer observation no indication of real chewing was found. These chewing-like movements in hyraxes are likely to perform some communication function. At most, it may be that occasionally hyraxes do vomit some swallowed food back to the oral cavity, chew it a bit more and then swallow it again – but that is not a part of hyraxes’ normal behavior, nor has it indeed been observed with any reasonable degree of confidence. At present, this remains a mere conjecture.
Regarding hares, you are right that hares and rabbits are “somewhat similar”: they both belong to the family Leporidae, and their physiology and behavior is much similar. (On Leporidae, see the webpage of the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
The idea that hares/rabbits “rechew their cud,” as you have put it, is, however, entirely mistaken. I have not seen the article in the Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia in full, but the quotation you brought judiciously refrains from using the word “cud”; instead, it says that the hare “chews food previously swallowed” (emphasis mine). I think that it is a reference to coprophagy – eating one’s excrement in order to extract the nutritional value it might contain. Hares and rabbits do practice coprophagy; but even in the “weblog” you referred to (actually, message 19508 in Yahoo DebunkCreation discussion group) this phenomenon is described as different from cud-chewing. As another message (19509) in the same discussion group has put it, “Rabbits do not eat cud or regurgitated material. Ruminants do that, and rabbits are not ruminants. Rabbits eat their shit, which still contains a lot of organic material that gets extratced as it passes through the gut a second time. Shit is not cud. Big difference.” (See also messages 19510-19512 and 19517-19518 in that discussion group.)
Cud is food regurgitated from the stomach to the oral cavity via the throat (the foodpipe). The Hebrew for “cud,” gerah, is evidently derived from the same etymon as the Hebrew for “throat,” garon. In fact, in the early post-Biblical period the term gerah itself was used to designate the throat (Mishnah Tractate Yoma 2:3, 7; Tractate Tamid 3:1, 4:3). Thus, coprophagy cannot qualify for “chewing the cud” (literally, “bringing up the cud,” Heb. ma’aleh gerah, which is ascribed by the Pentateuch to the hare and the hyrax).

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